Published:
First published in 1965 in Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 54.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
page 564a.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
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• README
7/IX.1922.
Comrade Bukharin:
I have read (in Sotsialistichesky Vestnik) Gorky’s vile letter.[2] At first I thought of attacking him in the press (over the S.R.s), but then decided that this would he too much. Let us consult about this. Perhaps you see him now and then and talk with him? Please, write me your opinion. I have seen few newspapers (almost no foreign ones). This means that I have scant knowledge of the “situation”. Write me your opinion in the greatest possible detail.
Best regards from all of us to your wife and yourself.
Yours,
Lenin
P.S. I am almost well.
P.S. I am writing to Krestinsky to get me the original of Gorky’s letter published in Sotsialistichesky Vestnik of 20/VII.1922.[1]
If he forgets, will you send it along.
[1] See Collected Works, Fifth (Russian) Edition, Vol. 54, Document 444.—Ed.
[2] A reference to Maxim Gorky’s letter to Anatole France on July 3, 1922, over the trial of the Socialist-Revolutionaries on charges of counter-revolutionary activity. Gorky missed the essence of the case, and wrote that the trial was a preparation for “the murder of people who had sincerely served the cause of the Russian people’s emancipation”, and asked France to write to the Soviet Government to tell them that it was “intolerable to allow the crime”. Perhaps, “your weighty word will save the valuable lives of socialists”. He also sent France a copy of his letter on this question to Deputy Chairman of the C.P.C., A. I. Rykov, warning that the passage of death sentences on the accused would result “in a moral blockade of Russia by socialist Europe”.
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